Apple and London's Metropolitan Police have a new plan to make stolen iPhones useless
An expensive paperweight
If you've spent the last year gripping your phone like it's the Crown Jewels every time a scooter whizzes past, there's finally some encouraging news.
Apple has struck a new agreement with the Metropolitan Police aimed at making stolen iPhones dramatically less valuable to criminals, in what could be a significant blow to London's booming phone-snatching trade.
The move comes as phone theft continues to plague the capital. Around 80,000 devices were stolen in London last year alone, prompting us to put together a guide on how to protect your data and what to do if your phone gets nicked. As that piece explains, the real prize for thieves often isn't the handset itself, but the access it gives them to your bank accounts, emails and digital life.
Now Apple and the Met are trying to make the phones themselves far less useful.
Under the new partnership, device identifiers such as IMEI numbers will be shared between Apple and police, helping track stolen handsets and monitor whether they're being reactivated, exported overseas or broken down for parts.
The ultimate goal is simple: if a stolen iPhone can't be reused, resold or reactivated, there's far less incentive to steal it in the first place.
Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has been pushing tech firms for months to do more to tackle phone theft, previously warning that if manufacturers didn't act voluntarily, he would push for legislation forcing them to.
The Met says improvements to phone security are already having an impact. Thefts and robberies involving stolen phones fell by 18 per cent across London in the year to May 2026, while Westminster, one of the capital's worst hotspots for phone crime, has seen a 45.8 per cent drop so far this year.
Apple recently switched on its Stolen Device Protection feature by default for users, adding extra barriers that prevent thieves from changing passwords or disabling security settings, even if they've seen your passcode.
It's the sort of feature cyber security experts have been urging people to activate for months. In our guide to surviving a phone theft, experts warned that criminals often move fast, attempting to access banking apps, email accounts and social media profiles within minutes of stealing a handset.
The new data-sharing arrangement is designed to tackle the problem further up the chain by targeting the criminal networks that profit from moving thousands of stolen devices around the world.
Recent Met investigations uncovered one operation that allegedly trafficked up to 40,000 stolen phones to China, accounting for around 40 per cent of all devices stolen in London during a two-year period.
For anyone who's ever watched their phone disappear into the distance on the back of an e-bike, this gives you peace of mind that the portal to your life is worthless.
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